What happens when options regarding water use
dwindle away. "Cadillac Desert" indeed:
Federal officials have given the states until Aug. 16 to come up with a plan to swiftly conserve as much as a third of the river’s flows, the amount they believe is necessary to keep Lake Powell — a key reservoir along the Arizona-Utah border — from reaching disastrous levels next year. But the pain of the potential solutions is so huge that the states are struggling to reach a deal, according to eight people familiar with the discussions.
...The solutions could include politically incendiary steps that previous administrations have only threatened: making steep cuts to water deliveries that would hit tribes and cities first, telling farmers how they can use water that they legally own, or cutting water deliveries across the board, which could get tied up in court. But inaction could lead to worse consequences: hydropower turbines crucial to the stability of the Western electrical grid grinding to a halt, cities from Phoenix to Los Angeles losing a major source of water, large swaths of highly productive farmland drying up and a Grand Canyon with no water flowing through it.
“It’s all risks,” said John Fleck, a water policy professor at the University of New Mexico. “I don’t see anything that’s not a risk. It’s all bad options at this point.”
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